


Boats Against the Current

by RileyC



Series: Getting To Know You, Getting To Know All About You [1]
Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Identity Porn, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 03:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9216404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RileyC/pseuds/RileyC
Summary: Clark can't stop thinking about Bruce Wayne. There's a mystery there, he senses, and he can't just let it go...





	

“Did you know Superman can turn back time?” His mother’s voice was warm and rich with amusement in his ear. “Apparently if he flies backwards fast enough, something like that, he can just _whoosh_  spin the whole planet back in time.”

“I did not know that,”Clark said. He had to smile at the enjoyment she derived from some of the speculation about him, most of it way, way out there. How would he even know if he possessed that power? God knew there were moments, events, he would give anything to be able to step back in time and change. Where would it stop, though, what would be the repercussions of an ability like that? His quote/unquote normal powers carried sufficient ramifications; he didn’t think he would be playing at time travel anytime soon.

Phone cradled between ear and shoulder, he opened the refrigerator. “Mom, why are you hanging out on Superman fan sites?” Would that ever not strike him as bizarre beyond belief, that there were Superman fan sites?

“Can’t your old mother be curious?”

“Pretty sure I don’t have an __old__  mother.”

“Hah!” Martha snorted. “What are you eating?”

Mouth full of grapes, he chewed fast and swallowed. “How do you know I’m eating anything?”

“I’ve got pretty good hearing, too.”

He could not dispute that. “Just some grapes.” He pried the lid off a container of mac and cheese. “I’m eating fine, Mom.”

Martha’s snort was skeptical this time.

Before she could get started on how he couldn’t take care of everyone else if he didn’t take care of himself first, Clark steered her in another direction. “How was your day? How’s the diner?”

“The diner is good,” she said. As she told him about her day, Clark found the day’s troubles start to lift and float away. One of the greatest gifts his parents had given him was to keep him grounded in the every day things in life. All those moments that might not seem significant but which could serve as lifelines when you least suspected. He needed that more than ever these days.

“Oh, and Pete Ross stopped by--that boy does like his pie--and told me to say hey the next time I talked to you.”

“Tell him hey back.”

“I will. So,” he could hear her shifting around the couch, hear the little grunt of pain she didn’t want him to know about because her hip was bothering her, “you do anything interesting today?”

He smiled, popped the mac and cheese in the microwave. “Few things. I met two billionaires,” he said, thoughts drifting back to the gala.

“Well, look at you, rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty,” she teased him. “You don’t sound impressed.”

Clark laughed, set the timer. “I’m not sure what I am.”

“What were they like? Have I heard of them?”

“Well, I don’t know. Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne? Ring any bells?”

“A few. Bruce is that boy whose parents died, I think. Or am I thinking of that Oliver Queen?”

“I have no idea, Mom.”

“Well,” she took a sip of something, probably chamomile tea, “what are your billionaires like?” She had the dog up the couch with her now. Clark could hear the happy snuffles as it got comfortable. “Rude? Snooty?”

“Weird--or I guess it’s eccentric when you’ve got that much money.” He told her about the encounter, how Lex Luthor had creeped him out, and Bruce Wayne--he couldn’t quite pin Bruce Wayne down for her.

“Sounds like he got under your skin.”

“Little bit,” Clark admitted. “I might have provoked him.”

“How could you provoke him?”

“Well, I asked him about The Batman and how Gotham seems to turn a blind eye to his methods. He took it personally for some reason.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he took it as some kind of criticism of Gotham in general. People can be sensitive about things like that.”

“That they can. Sounds like there was something more, though.”

The microwave beeped and he took out the mac and cheese, stirred it with a fork. “He may have been just a teensy bit condescending,” Clark said as he took the mac and cheese over to his desk.

“Condescending how?”

“Just…his manner. The way he called me ‘son.’” That had rankled quite a bit, actually. He suspected it had been meant to.

“Did he?” Martha sounded like she was ready to take umbrage on his behalf. “How’d he mean that?”

“Putting me in my place. It’s not like he’s that much older than me.” Ten years, maybe?

“Well,” she stifled a yawn, “like your Mr. Fitzgerald says, the rich are different.”

“I guess they are. Listen, I should let you go. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“I like hearing yours, too, sweetie. Okay, you have a good night. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Ma. Good night.”

It took another couple of minutes to well and truly say their goodbyes but finally she was off to bed for real--“Have to get up bright and early,” as she hadn’t been getting up bright and early all his life--and he turned on his computer to get some work done.

The quarterback controversy brewing over at the Metropolis Meteors was not a topic to hold his interest, however. He wasn’t quite sure how he had pissed off Perry White but how else to explain Perry assigning him to fill in when Steve Lombard left to take an on air job at ESPN?

His thought kept drifting to Bruce Wayne, his curiosity piqued by what his mother had said. He brought up Google and typed in “Oliver Queen” first. Billionaire, head of Queen Industries headquartered in Star City; Queen was handsome, blond, and sported a goatee as if born to it. His wife, Dinah Lance, was a knockout as well. Not much else jumped out at him--his mother was right that Oliver Queen had lost his parents at a young age--but the name Star City rang bell.

Another click confirmed why: Star City was the source of a recent spate of urban legends about a masked vigilante who prowled its streets armed with little more than his wits and a quiver full of arrows--some of them high tech, according to eyewitness claims. Tabloid press had dubbed him the Green Arrow. Word on the street had it that he sometimes worked in association with the Black Canary, a woman in black leather and fishnet stockings, with a penchant for motorcycles and a screech that could talk a grown man head over heels. There was no official confirmation for any of this, of course, and only a scattering of blurry photos to back it up.

Clark had been following the report for awhile now and had wanted to head out to see if there was anything to all the talk. What with one thing and another, the time was never right. If he did track down this Green Arrow or Black Canary, what then? He hadn’t really thought much beyond that. What would they do--form a band, start a club? He could only describe it, if he had to describe it, as a hunger to find someone else like him. Green Arrow might not have powers--Black Canary, if reports were true, possessed something--but maybe they shared the same goals.

He didn’t want to get his hopes up that way. Discovering that Gotham’s Dark Knight was clad in tarnished armor had cured him of that. Maybe. Probably not, if he was being honest with himself. Unconsciously he rubbed his chest, where the House of El symbol and its promise of hope was displayed when he suited up as Superman, and tapped in another name: Batman.

No news; or rather, no change in the status quo. Every time he brought up Batman, everyone would roll their eyes like he was the biggest rube to ever set foot in the __Daily Planet’s__ hallowed halls. “It’s Gotham, Kent,” Perry White would tell him, as though that explained everything. Clark didn’t see how that explained anything. Did villains like The Joker or Penguin come about because of this Batman, or was he a reaction to them? And how did everyone just stand by and let it happen?

He hadn’t been over there yet. If he had learned anything since Zod, it was that gathering intel was of vital importance before venturing into potentially hostile territory. Something else everyone was positive about was that Superman would not be welcomed in Gotham City. True or not, the day was coming that he would have to test that.

Would Bruce Wayne welcome him? he wondered as he typed the billionaire’s name into Google and clicked for results. There was…a lot. Recent business dealings led the page of results. Bruce did __not__  own the paper, at least not at the moment, but he and Queen, and Luthor, had a rivalry going that varied in intensity. Rumors, past and present, of assorted romantic conquests took up more space. Could anyone really date that much and get anything else accomplished? Not to mention, hadn’t the whole playboy thing gone out with things like the Rat Pack and the 1950s? Neither that or what the tabloid press deemed ‘madcap escapades’ interested him much, so he went for the biographical material. Five seconds later, he almost wished he hadn’t.

His mother had remembered correctly. Bruce Wayne had indeed lost his parents at a young age. Clark had anticipated that there had been some terrible accident. This, this account, cold-blooded in its bare facts recitation of how Bruce’s parents had been gunned down right in front of Bruce, was so much more horrific.

In the past year Clark had gained some idea of what it meant to be famous. Good or bad, he could distance himself from the unwanted celebrity. If pressed, he would have found it difficult to draw a distinction between those two poles; some of the people who admired Superman were as baffling and disturbing as the ones who hated and feared him. Anonymity was an option for him, though. So long as no one connected Superman to Clark Kent, he could escape it all at any time.

How did Bruce escape the scrutiny? How did anyone, when the worst moment in their life was a lucrative source for true crime books and television shows, for Lifetime movies of the week, and at least one big screen Hollywood reenactment? There was a video of Bruce at some event, trapped by an entertainment reporter with the gall to stick a microphone in Bruce’s face and ask if he was looking forward to seeing the movie, and if he’d had any tips for the young actor picked to play him in the film. The video was one from a few years ago; Bruce looked younger, vulnerable. There was a desperate, fight-or-flight glint in his eyes and he couldn’t manage even a lopsided smile, much less that polished smirk he put on now. Before the segment could go much longer, a distinguished-looking, older man with a British accent intervened, shutting down the reporter and getting Bruce away before things escalated into a messy altercation.

Clark surprised himself by thinking the reporter would have had it coming if Bruce had popped him one in the chops.

Something else pinged for his attention and he replayed the few seconds with the distinguished gentleman a couple of times. He knew that voice. It was the same one he’d heard when he picked up on Bruce’s covert conversation at the party.

That was one of many things he had filed away for future investigation. All he could think of, off hand, was some kind of corporate espionage. Wouldn’t that be assigned to some hired agent, though, not the head of the company? What could Lex Luthor have that Bruce wanted that badly, that he was prepared to go to such lengths to get it?

Maybe that was how Bruce coped? The affairs, the escapades--spying on/stealing from a business rival--was a means of numbing himself so he could survive? That didn’t strike Clark as the real answer somehow. Or rather, it might be how Bruce would present it to the world, part of a facade he put up. To hide what?

Chin cupped in his hand, mac and cheese growing cold, Clark sat there for a long time, gaze fixed on all the images of Bruce Wayne, wondering which, if any of them, was the man’s true face.

His thoughts drifted back to his Mr. Fitzgerald--a brief smile curved his lips at the way his mother had phrased that; to Fitzgerald, to Gatsby watching that green light in the darkness and fixing all his hopes on it.

Did Bruce have a green light? Was his more substantial than Gatsby’s had been in the end?

Clark was surprised to find he hoped so.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> While this is complete unto itself, a sequel is a possibility.
> 
> Also, the first title was going to be "First Impressions," with me thinking of how that had been Jane Austen's original title for what became "Pride and Prejudice." Make of that what you will. Moot point now, perhaps, with Clark casting Bruce as Gatsby...


End file.
